Happy New Year's, everyone! I wish you much prosperity and love in 2018.
As you may have seen me tweet earlier this week, my New Year's Resolution is to write more. I truly love writing - to write is to serve, to write is to learn, to write is to meditate. I'm going to take a different tact this year, though - I'm going to write more frequently and hopefully much shorter. I like writing longer posts but I'm spending over 70 hours per week on data.world and then some time on our startup investments - and of course I very much care about spending time with my wife and children. So, in short there just isn't much room for more. As a matter of fact, in 2017 I resigned from two non-profit Boards (Conscious Capitalism and Entrepreneurs Foundation) that I really love just to create more time for data.world. Both were painful decisions for me but a startup really needs that type of focus, and I'm truly having a blast working alongside an incredible team at data.world on a very important mission.
I've already got a running list of seven more topics (and growing quickly) that I plan to write about as soon as I can but for now - for my first post in a long time - I want to talk about the importance of having an Always Be Learning mindset and practice.
The mindset piece of an Always Be Learning life is a little easier to cover although it is very hard in practice. Many people, when they achieve some level of success in their careers, literally stop learning. The arrogant, wealthier ones of this bunch believe that they got to that point because of their "genius" and completely discount luck, circumstance, or more importantly the giants that they stand on their shoulders of who helped them along in their journey. When I won the Best CEO Legacy Award last year from the Austin Business Journal, in my acceptance speech I dedicated 90% of my content to the many that helped me get to that point in life. That included my computer teacher back in middle school, my wife, my mom (all of Lucky7 is a tribute to her), my CEO coach, my co-founders, some of my investors and advisors, and many others - it was a very long list (I bet it would be for you too if you really thought about it) and I spoke about them for at least ten minutes. Carol Dweck covers this "growth" mindset extensively in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, so I'm going to stop going on about this here in the interest of keeping this post short. But I will warn you - please avoid the arrogant jerks that have stopped learning. Unfortunately, I've worked with a few of them in my career and it is crushing to a person like me who has an Always Be Learning mindset. See my previous Lucky7 post about the critical importance of checking references for how to make sure - to the best of your ability (especially for Board members and executives) - so you avoid the pain of working with one.
As far as practicing an Always Be Learning life, well that is a little harder to cover. But I'll tell you how I do it:
First, I read obsessively - and I cast a very wide net in doing so. I regularly consume Wired magazine and have since the first issues. It does an amazing job of covering how technology is evolving and also changing society. I read the Wall Street Journal. I regularly read so many articles shared by friends on Facebook from credible sources, like The Washington Post and The Atlantic. A quick digression: we all know what a challenge Facebook has in front of it given the Russian propaganda ads and fake articles leading up to our Presidential election (at data.world, we featured one of those datasets as a top 10 dataset of 2017 - see #1 on our list). And it is really cool to see how Zuckerberg has stepped up to make this his 2018 personal challenge - I have no doubt that he deeply loves Facebook and I'm betting that he will lead his team to fix it to the best of his ability. Ok, back to reading. I regularly read books - lots of them. In 2017, one of the books that stirred me most was Yuval Harari's Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (I think it was written to scare you in many ways but there are some great points and it really makes you think as a great successor work to his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind). In 2017, I held two incredible discussions on Homo Deus with a diverse group of readers, including our Mayor Adler, author Byron Reese (who is also coming out with a book - this year - on the convergence of AI and humankind), and others. I read a lot of blogs, such as First Round Review and almost anything written by Benedict Evans. The access entrepreneurs have to entrepreneurial wisdom these days is just incredible (First Round made this even easier last year with the launch of First Search). And speaking of that access, I listen to a lot of podcasts on the way to and from work. I think the single best podcast for entrepreneurs is Reid Hoffman's Masters of Scale and my good friend (and data.world and prior Bazaarvoice investor), Mike Maples, Jr., agrees with me. Recently on Masters of Scale, Reid interview Barry Diller in a two-part series on Infinite Learners, which is just an awesome listen and obviously related to this Lucky7 post. Sometimes there is good content on Kara Swisher's Recode Decode, like this amazing interview with Scott Galloway, serial entrepreneur and author of the book The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google (another book I recently read and highly recommend). One podcast that I really love, and is not tech, is Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History. Both seasons are just exceptional. I read a lot of curated material, such as what The Aspen Institute provided us in my Henry Crown Fellowship. This includes Aristotle, Ghandi, MLK, Plato, Tolstoy, and many others. The Henry Crown Fellowship for me was like a secondary MBA - but in a more profound way. I wouldn't trade my Wharton MBA but I would say the Fellowship was of equal importance to my growth (sadly I completed the formal portion of my two-year Fellowship in 2017 but it continues on every year at the Aspen Action Forum, where readings and the debates and discussions that ensue are still hosted with other Fellows). Yes, I really love reading!
Second, I engage myself in select conferences, such as TED (probably my favorite every year - the world's best classroom with the world's best students) and the Aspen Action Forum that I just mentioned above. I've gotten value from Techonomy as well. The year that David Kirkpatrick interviewed Zuckerberg right after the Presidential election (I mean literally two days after) was an experience I'll never forget. Zuckerberg's come a long way since then on his understanding of the issue (again, a nod to his 2018 personal challenge). I go to a few off-the-record events every year that I can't talk about here (trust me, I'm not being elitist those are just the rules), but they are all about learning and actively discussing important issues that face the world (and they are very diverse, like TED). I just accepted an invite to Goldman Sachs annual Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco, and I hope to see you there. I go to a lot of conferences but a few that really provoke my learning - like TED and the Aspen Action Forum - I attend every year. I also usually attend the AIPAC Policy Conference every year and will be there in March, alongside by friend Adam Lyons (founder and Chairman of The Zebra). I learn a lot about America, Israel, and DC at AIPAC and we are proud supporters of the organization at Hurt Family Investments.
Third, I seek out mentors - lots of them. We have over 30 Advisory Board members at data.world, and I had a similar number of advisors at Bazaarvoice. I have an incredible mentor in Jason Pressman from Shasta Ventures, who led our first round of funding and serves on our Board of Directors (I've known Jason for 18 years and he is just exceptional). Jason really provokes my thinking. Gary Hoover is a great mentor - his long email threads with lots of (primarily business) analysis provokes my thinking. He is a very independently minded libertarian thinker. If you haven't read Gary's book The Lifetime Learner's Guide to Reading and Learning you are missing out (and check out the review from yours truly). John Mackey is too - I've been very fortunate to be mentored by him over the years. He's impacted my diet and a number of other things (and it was an honor to serve alongside him on the Conscious Capitalism Board). But my number one mentor is my wife, Debra. I'm serious. When we got married I had $1,000 to my name and she had $2,000. Twenty-one amazing years of marriage later, I can't count how many times she's helped me (and she's my best friend). Mike Cronin of the Austin Business Journal does a good job of getting me on the record about Debra in this article.
Fourth, I do a lot of reflecting. I'm an ENTJ (I used to be an INTJ) and I ruminate on things a lot. This helps reinforce my learning. I've learned over the years not to beat myself up - just to reflect and realize I'm human and constantly evolving. Vedanta helped me with that perspective too - going to India to study Vedanta under Swamiji Parthasarathy was an incredible experience (and then I turned around and helped host a similar week-long session here in the US with him to share this experience with others). Kirk Dando, my CEO coach, helps me with that too - and we do a trip together every year to reflect together on our hikes. You can listen to one of my interviews with Kirk Dando on his great podcast to dive in more on that if you want.
Fifth, I actively try to shake myself up and question what I think I know. That's why I went to India to study Vedanta in the first place. That's why I've had a few dinners with Bruce Sterling, the absolutely brilliant science fiction author, and follow his State of the World interview on the WELL every year with our local brilliant Jon Lebkowsky (Bruce used to be local, BTW). I also spend a lot of time reading on Quora about topics that you would probably never guess that I'm interested in. And going back to podcasts for a moment, I occasionally listen to Waking Up by Sam Harris, which was recommended to me by Rabbi David Wolpe. It is really different. Shaking it up like this provides a different level of neural connections for me. The Henry Crown Fellowship was and is that type of experience.
So, there you have it. I'm writing this in the hopes that it helps you to have more of an Always Be Learning mindset and practice in 2018. And I'm writing this to double-down on my own practice (again, to write is to learn). I think it's really important and leaders like Bill Gates say that the number one trait they look for in hiring someone is Curiosity. Who would you rather hire, someone with an Always Be Learning approach or someone who thinks they've got it all figured out? Until my next post, thank you for making it this far and happy New Year again. Please share any practices you would like with me and the other readers of Lucky7 below - we'll all appreciate it.
A photo on my desk of me and Debra with Swamiji Parthasarathy in India